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Adirondacks, Camp Santanoni, Newcomb, New York: Great camp under restoration

Cynthia Taylor, a visitor from Massachusetts, lunches on the porch at Camp Santanoni, an Adirondacks "great camp" that is being restored, in Newcomb, N.Y. (Mike Groll / The Associated Press)

By Michael HillAssociated Press

Sat., Aug. 31, 2013

NEWCOMB, N.Y.—Camp Santanoni will never again be a private refuge for the mega-rich to enjoy the Adirondacks in rustic opulence, but after two decades of slow, steady restoration work on the log buildings, visitors can get a sense of roughing it in the style of the Gilded Age.

Santanoni was one of the earliest “great camps” built by wealthy families with names such as Rockefeller and Vanderbilt beginning in the late 19th century. Managed by New York state environmental officials, it is the only remaining great camp publicly owned. The once-imperiled camp remains a work in progress. Summer visitors who hike or bike the eight-kilometre road to the lakeside camp are likely to hear hammering.

“When I first went there, the first week I almost left. It was so daunting,” said master carpenter Michael Frenette, who has done most of the work at Santanoni since 1998. At first, he performed triage, but now almost all the buildings are stabilized.

“Two or three years ago I remember just walking up on the porch and it being like a lightning bolt striking me: ‘Wow, it’s back! It’s a camp again.’ ”

The great camps were camps only in the loosest sense. Santanoni’s owners, Albany banker Robert Pruyn and his wife Anna, had roughly 50 buildings constructed, including a gatehouse, barns and a creamery. The roof of the main lodge sweeps over five more buildings, creating a suite of cabins sharing a long porch overlooking Newcomb Lake.

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“Some of the early visitors just got off the wagon and ran around the porches and opened the doors and just marvelled that there was running hot and cold water and that there was a piano in the living room,” said Steven Engelhart, executive director of Adirondack Architectural Heritage, which is helping preserve Santanoni.

The piano and other furnishings are long gone, but summer visitors can poke through the buildings.

Several thousand come each year, including winter visitors on cross-country skis. The idea is to maintain the camp so that it appears as though the Pruyns could show up anytime, said historic preservation officer Charles Vandrei.

“Everyone likes to go through all the rooms trying to imagine what it was like 100 or 150 years ago,” said Matt Carter, who biked in recently with his preschool-age daughter, Abby.

In Santanoni’s heyday, the Pruyns and their guests would stroll among the tall pines with men in jackets, ladies in long skirts. They played ping-pong, sang, boated and enjoyed meals cooked by staff they could summon by buzzer. Pruyn heirs sold the camp to another family in 1953. It passed to the state in 1972.

Preservation work began in 1993 on the artist cabin’s roof, a priority to keep buildings stable, and has spread to other buildings since then.

Engelhart figures $1.9 million has been spent on rehabilitation since the mid-’90s, with money coming from his group, the Town of Newcomb, New York state and the federal government. He estimates they are about halfway through. But there’s still work that could be done, from chimney flashing above to the wine cellar below.

“Endless, really,” Frenette said. “It depends on where you want to go.”

The site is accessible year-round for hikers, bikers, cross-country skiers and snowshoers. Some buildings open with staff on-site in summer, through until U.S. Labor Day, plus occasional daylong guided tours (last one this season, Sept. 7) and three weekend winter events around U.S. holidays: Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents Day and St. Patrick’s Day.

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